A Farewell to X
I joined Twitter in October 2009 and immediately followed Stephen Fry, Jenson Button, Barack Obama and Jake Humphreys. Not quite a nightmare blunt rotation, but not the dream one either. Obama followed me back, I think, which brought a great thrill, until I realised that he followed pretty much everyone back.
Not many people were on Twitter at the time, so I drifted away, joining Facebook the following January when it was experiencing a surge of popularity at my school. Many hours were lost to Farmville over the coming year (I had to text my mum, telling her my password, so that she could log in and harvest some plants for me, such was the depth of my obsession).
When I got back into Twitter, it was booming, and I posted an inordinate amount of absolute nonsense nearly every day for the next five years, racking up tens of thousands of tweets. I participated wholeheartedly and without irony in trends like 'Replace a word in a film title to make it naughty', and have vague memories of role-playing as though I were a student at Hogwarts for a while.
The peak came in 2013 with Godfrey's Week of Colour, a trend of my own invention where I tried to find out once and for all what the best colour was. This produced great debates and a tiny parcel of engagement from well known Twitter characters.
It became, as it did for many, a main source of news - both serious and trivial - and for a long time, it didn't feel as though you were wasting your time scrolling through your timeline. Your timeline was your own, curated by you and filled with stuff you wanted to see.
I made an account for my fantasy football league, and an account for this blog, posting exclusively about University Challenge and interacting with many of you. It had a community feel to it, Twitter.
Perhaps this is a rose-tinted view of these bygone times, and perhaps it was no more than the addictive dopamine hunt we now know social media to be, but without the burden of knowing that. Either way, I am able to look back on those times with a fondness I cannot ascribe to the website in the present.
Musk bought Twitter four days after the 13th birthday of my Twitter account (October 2022), and though it is easy to say that the decline started there, in all honesty, it had probably been coming since before then. Content you didn't want to see, being pushed by accounts which had previously been banned, and who stood to profit from creating the most division and argumentation.
And now, an AI which does as it pleases with no guardrails and a user base who are happy to exploit that. I should have left a long time ago, but I think I was holding onto memories of a place which has long been lost. A place which will never come back, not on Twitter. You don't have to leave, of course, I'm not telling you what to do. But you might feel freer for having done so.
With that out of the way, onto this week's episode, between UCL and Merton.
Here's your first starter for ten
First points to UCL's Lee with Anthony and Cleopatra, and they picked up a hat-trick on films with chemical elements in the title. Lee attempts another starter, but gives Dekker instead of Desmond when the question had asked for a name which could be both a surname and a given name. I bet there are people called Dekker, but she went for the wrong one, allowing Cosnett in to steal the points for Merton.
Bonuses on a play from the 1600s followed, and they took a hat-trick of their own. Ong gave them the lead with Gericault, and the excellent bonuswork continued with a perfect set on non-American actresses.
No one recognises Blackburn cathedral on the picture starter, so Ong wins the bonuses with methane on the replacement. They struggle with three more cathedral towns, dropping the first points of the match.
Campion-Dye gets UCL going again with a frankly ridiculous buzz of Immanuel Kant, coming in before Rajan has even started reading a quote from one of his books. Doherty takes a starter with Suriname, and a pair of bonuses tied the game.
Elektra gives Ong her second starter, winning a set on plays with God in the title. Lots of questions about films and plays today. That's four sets of bonuses plus the Shakespeare starter. Ong also takes the music bonus with Delibes, much to Rajan's delight.
Half-time scores: UCL 70 - 80 Merton
Cosnett comes in with a reasonable guess of Copenhagen after hearing Hans Christian Anderson, but the answer is Odense, which Lee picks up, giving UCL the lead.
Yuga from Duncan wins Merton a bonus set on the poems of Shakespeare - is that another set on plays, effectively? Absolute dominance from the topic.
Durer gives Cosnett the second picture starter, and they took the lead with a single bonus. His opposite number struck back immediately with Portugal, putting UCL back in front. Doherty then offers an amusing guess of 'serial and... once' for the two categories of violent offenders. Still, this is perhaps a better guess than Duncan's, whose two categories of violent offenders were 'violent' and 'non-violent'.
Cosnett ties the game with the Federalist Papers, and is desperate to crack out his French accent for a bonus set about choux pastries on which they take one - croque en bouche. A second consecutive starter for Cosnett opened up a decent gap of thirty points for the first time in ages, but will it be enough?
Doherty shoots back for UCL and they race through a bonus set, wasting no time on conferring when they don't have a clue. Lakota-Baldwin puts them in touching distance with Coltrane and a bonus on opera (if I was being cheeky I could perhaps include these in the category of plays, but I won't) ties the game.
Rajan is very excited as he reads out the next starter, which goes to a very flushed Cosnett with fleur. There are seconds remaining, and it matters not that they take no bonuses because the gong sounds anyway.
UCL 150 - 160 Merton
An enjoyably tight game with plenty of lead changes. Strong from Cosnett in the final knockings to get his team over the line, but either side could have won this.
Next week we have Darwin vs Sheffield followed by Imperial vs Warwick the week after. Bloody love the QFs.
With that, I bid adieu to Twitter.
There's a phrase I have always remembered, from a tweet by a Lily Allen account, which I thought for a time had been a fake account but realised recently was actually her. She was leaving Twitter, and left with this - I am a neoluddite, goodbye. Turns out that it was from the same account she uses now, which is still active. Also turns out that it was sent before I had even joined Twitter, so who knows why its always stuck with me.
I am a neo-luddite, goodbye.
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